Ruby on Rails Notes

I jotted these down in a notepad a few weeks ago and wanted to get them recorded for future reference. Just some random notes for using Ruby on Rails.

Put validates_presence_of :title (for example) in the model for a module to require that a value be present when the new or edit form is submitted.

To create a new module, execute “script/generate scaffold <module_names>”. Module names should be singular. This’ll generate all the default templates for the scaffold so that you don’t have to create them from scratch.

In the model, use things like “has_many :categories” to describe relationships among modules/tables.

Like python, ruby/rails has a console thingy that you can use to test code quickly. Run scrip/console to fire it up.

FastCGI is a pain in the ass but is faster than CGI and seems to be better than mod_ruby. Need at some point to write up some notes on making this work well. Quick and dirty: Make sure apache user and group are set near the beginning of the file (before mod_fastcgi is loaded); make sure the fastcgi log directory isn’t in a symlinked path and that it’s chmoded to 0777; get the debug dispatch.fcgi (lost the link but can find it later), which seems less buggy; after changing dispatch.fcgi, be sure to kill all dispatch.fcgi processes.

Make sure you kill old sessions. If you get too many of them, your software will bog down.